How to Use Tracking URLs for Email Marketing

Posted by Jenn Yorke on Wed, May 18, 2011

Why Should I Use Tracking URLs in Emails?

Marketing is all about driving knowledge of your product or service and bringing your sales people great leads! In order to do that, you need to have an understanding of where your website visitors are coming from and which website visitors actually turn into the best leads. If you're sending lots of emails, wouldn't you want to know which ones are actually effective? Tracking URLs help you see what's working and what isn't so you can work smarter!

How to Use Tracking URLs in Emails

What Tracking URLs in Emails can do!

Tracking URLs in emails can help you increase the efficacy of your emails. You can easily run tests, try different language, show different offers, and see exactly which offers and language resonated with your audience. The great thing about that is you can then use the best messaging moving forward, rather than sending email willy-nilly. This saves you time, since you'll get more click throughs faster!

Image used with permission from RambergMediaImages

Tags: Email Marketing, Analyze

Comments

Hey, thanks for all the great ideas and for the excellent Content Camp experience!

Posted @ Tuesday, January 03, 2012 7:16 AM by Clarke Bishop

@Clarke

The actual rules on how we classify incoming visits into a given campaign bucket can get really complex. We basically say "use only one" as a way of simplifying it.

However, here's your super-advanced tip.

If you do something like utm_campaign=MYCAMPAIGN&utm_medium=EMAIL we successfully put that in the Email bucket. Or if you did utm_campaign=MYCAMPAIGN&utm_medium=PPC we'd put it in the PPC bucket and so on.

The benefit of this advanced tip is that you get more readable campaign names, nothing more.

Posted @ Tuesday, January 03, 2012 7:16 AM by Dan Dunn

@Clarke: We are planning to update the tracking URL builder to remove info that is not useful for you or your team.

@Alex: That is correct. You can use HubSpot's new Email Recipient report to see what people clicked on a a link. Right now it doesn't show what link was clicked, but it's a great feature idea that you should add to ideas.hubspot.com

Best,

Mark

Posted @ Tuesday, January 03, 2012 7:16 AM by Mark Kilens

@Clarke, the information will show up in Sources under "Other Campaigns". The Campaign Name string will just be longer (eg. PPC-Bing-My Offer-3 weeks)

Posted @ Tuesday, January 03, 2012 7:16 AM by Jenn Yorke

I have been following the blogs of Content Camp but haven't actually been tuning in (in NZ and just a bit time-starved at the mo) - I am under the impression that tracking URL's are inherent in emails sent via HubSpot - correct? Although if true, I must admit I haven't found where this is able to be analyzed yet.....would be really useful to know which links my readers are clicking (rather than just the number of clicks they've made), is this possible?

Posted @ Tuesday, January 03, 2012 7:16 AM by Alex

I think my question wasn't clear. How do these "help my team" if they don't show up anywhere?

Hi Clarke - the additional items are for your team. We use them to help differentiate between all the campaigns that we do.

This may be a more advanced question, but in looking at the tracking URL generator, only one of the parameters seems to be used.

Is there value to using the rest of these? Where do they show up in Hubspot?

Campaign Name* This is the name that will appear in the data table in Sources

But, the rest of these say "not used by the Sources screen.

Campaign Source

Campaign Medium

Campaign Content

Campaign Term

Academy

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